The StarCraft II thread

[DeathRowKitty]

Will watch/be rooting for you. Good luck!

[xRECKONERx]

So I got a new computer/mouse/keyboard and suddenly I'm getting facerolled in every SC2 match I play. WTF.

[Moratorium]

you forgot to install the instawin drivers

[TheButtonmen]

Longest Four Gate I've ever been involved in.

[Otolia]

"Man, I suck and he's good. I'm gonna six pool."

Oh man, I'm bad .. I'm gonna bunker rush >> (Thorzain vs. Stephano)

Otherwise HSCIII is more than awesome but there is WAY TOO MUCH GERMANS. Goody should have his fat ass banned from all tournaments because he is boring too watch. Almost as boring as NaNiwa ...

[Moratorium]

huk vs idra incoming

[xRECKONERx]

5PM today (as in, 45 minutes) ASCW is streaming a mini-tournament featuring Destiny, Vibe, Cruncher, and DDE.

If you're interested.

[AGar]

Hey look, two good players and two mediocre-but-popular-because-they-try-and-emulate-Idra's-attitude type players.

[Otolia]

[M] placing 2 players in the top 6 and Adelscott in the top 20 of the HSCIII. \o/

@AGar : I fail to see where are the good players in those four ... (Vibe, DDE ?)

Starting a serious discussion : What do you think of the invasion of koreans in the western big events (like NASL Open) ? Is it good for the scene or will they deprive western players from valuable source of income ?
Keep in mind that only a few top NA/EU players are payed to train / make enough money of tournaments to make a living out of it.

[AGar]

@AGar : I fail to see where are the good players in those four ... (Vibe, DDE ?)

ViBE and dde aren't garbage like CrunCher and Destiny.

Starting a serious discussion : What do you think of the invasion of koreans in the western big events (like NASL Open) ? Is it good for the scene or will they deprive western players from valuable source of income ?
Keep in mind that only a few top NA/EU players are payed to train / make enough money of tournaments to make a living out of it.

1. You're wrong when you say that "only a few top NA/EU players are payed to train" Most top teams have the resources to pay their players decent salaries, and when the houses are formed, that alleviates some of the expenses.

2. Western players who have the income provided from their teams are not focusing enough on their gaming to be complaining about Korean's entering the fray. Look at Huk and Jinro. They aren't doing a weekly podcast that takes up two hours that could be spent practicing. And they aren't helping produce weekly shows. And they aren't casting some tournament on a weekly basis. What they are doing (well, Jinro's slumping right now) is destroying face in most tournaments they enter. Idra admits to only practicing really a few hours a day, because his mechanics are so incredibly refined from his 2 years in BW progaming houses where he was practicing for almost 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. And when he was doing that, he was raping face. Now? He's arguably still one of the best outside Korea, but the results don't show as much. The scene isn't fractured like it was in BW.

[pickemgenius]

cruncher and destiny aren't garbage just because dde and vibe are slightly better(cruncher beat vibe, destiny lost to dde 2-1, with his internet being under constant attack and shit.)


^_^

[Otolia]

1. You're wrong when you say that "only a few top NA/EU players are payed to train" Most top teams have the resources to pay their players decent salaries, and when the houses are formed, that alleviates some of the expenses.

In France only MoMaN is paid to play starcraft 2 (and he is not the best player >>), insolence, Darkforce, Xlord aren't paid either. Grubby and ToD (former members of 4K) are still without teams and thus not paid. So far I know, EG fnatic, mouz, dignitas and TL (maybe coL now) have the resources to pay players on their roster a decent salary. Idra refused a scholarship to study physics to play starcraft ... he will probably regret it.

And houses are a korean concept, it's not really applicable outside, mostly because anyone with a ego would refuse to spend a miserable life playing 12 hours getting crushed by teammates until they can manage to qualify for a tournament ... that's also a reason why players like MC switched over to SC2.

[AGar]

1. You're wrong when you say that "only a few top NA/EU players are payed to train" Most top teams have the resources to pay their players decent salaries, and when the houses are formed, that alleviates some of the expenses.

In France only MoMaN is paid to play starcraft 2 (and he is not the best player >>), insolence, Darkforce, Xlord aren't paid either. Grubby and ToD (former members of 4K) are still without teams and thus not paid. So far I know, EG fnatic, mouz, dignitas and TL (maybe coL now) have the resources to pay players on their roster a decent salary. Idra refused a scholarship to study physics to play starcraft ... he will probably regret it.

EG, FnaticMSI, mousesports, ESC, TL, compLexity, sixjax, dignitas - just to name a few offhand that I know are paying something to their players.

IdrA is making a comfortable living with EG, and will for a decent amount of time. Who knows what he'll do after this, but I doubt he's going to be miserably poor off after his tenure in progaming ends.

Grubby has his own team right now, "Team Grubby" and SteelSeries is sponsoring him, which means he's probably getting enough to live on. He doesn't have to pay the excess that some of the larger organizations need to in order to sustain his team, so he's set.

White-Ra's salary is above average for Ukraine (this is pre-Duckload/Thermaltake) and he was living comfortably on that.

My guess is mTw also probably makes enough, at least some of their players. I don't know their roster offhand.

And houses are a korean concept, it's not really applicable outside, mostly because anyone with a ego would refuse to spend a miserable life playing 12 hours getting crushed by teammates until they can manage to qualify for a tournament ... that's also a reason why players like MC switched over to SC2.

This is relevant how? In NA, NASL is running a season that lasts roughly 15 weeks (let's just say 4 months). MLG appears once every two months. Other LANs are appearing regularly, all with significant prize pools. Every player (well, most every player) that played at DreamHack probably didn't pay much, if anything, to get there and only had minimal expenses. This means you have numerous opportunities to make decent money, even outside of Korea. Living in a house with other progamers (You could fit 6 in a 3 BR house, 9 if you really want to push it and the players are dedicated to this) alleviates some living expenses and gives you extremely valuable resources. And if this is your job and your living, be willing to put 40 solid hours into it, maybe even more. If I had the talent and was getting paid for this, I'd sure as hell be putting in the time. There isn't a single player outside of Korea who has any good reason to have an ego about themselves right now, and none of them should be bitching about "Koreans invading the scene." Work for it, dammit.

cruncher and destiny aren't garbage

They're decent players. But the only reason they're relevant to anyone is because they try and emulate IdrA's borderline unprofessionalism and rudeness. Cruncher's biggest claim to fame is a mediocre run in TSL3, beating IdrA (significant) and Mondragon (insignificant T_T). And the IdrA games can be more attributed to "IdrA, stop being an arrogant ass all the time," than CrunCher exhibiting a lot of talent. Destiny hasn't done anything worth noting yet.

[Moratorium]

Pretty pumped that huk won both dreamhack and homestory. Looking forward to watching the next GSL.

He's my goto guy to watch because he's also an American-Canadian Protoss like me

Noticed that him and MC do the exact same 1 gate core opening now in terms of placement (they put their pylons/initial gateway/cybercore in the same exact spots every match against certain races), and they seem to be doing pretty similar builds lately, i guess when huk said him and MC sit next to each other in the oGS house 12 hours a day every day practicing and sharing info, he wasn't kidding.

[Otolia]

Whatever because Stephano swept Huk in the groupstage. That kid made a splash though he should have destroyed Thorzain.

What I thought is that the setting up prohouses korean-style is very risky. Sure SC2 has a huge popularity but will it be enough to sustain many players in the long run ? In korea banks are sponsoring the GSL, most European team are sponsored by companies related to gaming and they are limited in budget.

[Moratorium]

You have to win when it counts. In the bracket, MC 2-0'd Stephano, but Huk 3-1'd MC.

Probably my favorite frenchman there was the one that kept casting (tod?), he seemed the most insightful...

[Otolia]

Stephano choked against MC, not that I think he is a better player than a 3 times GSL champion but it was his first international lan, he is only 17 and still haven't graduated. You don't have to defend the result, HuK has a very strong PvP but I don't think he can go far in the Code S because of the HUGE amount of terrans (MKP, Polt, MVP, sC)

If Huk defeats Polt in the Code S, I will put him above Alicia on the world protoss ranking (MC > Alicia > Inca). In the mean time, he is still a PvP ace. I predict a win against Killer and aLive though.

ToD is a former 4K. Since you don't know him, he was in THE dream team at some point in the WC3 (id est 4Kings) so he is the sole french who speaks a very good english. Still don't have a team and it was take who paid his ticket to the HSC.

EDIT : He improved his game overnight

[xRECKONERx]

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/2545809

S2 lock coming this Wednesday :O

[Iecerint]

I picked this up again a few days ago.

Name: Iecerint
Code: 713

Add me if you want.

[DeathRowKitty]

OKAY, I WILL

[Iecerint]

It didn't let me add you back...I guess you just messaged me? O well.

[AGar]

Updated the master table. Several people have noted playing/having accounts but haven't given up the goods. List at the bottom.

Mafiascum Name	Starcraft II Name	Starcraft II ID	Non-NA Server
AGar	AGar	#777
Albert B. Rampage	Rampage	#295
Claus	PatoArmado	#451
DeathRowKitty	GhostFrog	#104
DTMaster	DTMaster	#595
Fate	Fate	#257
Flameaxe	Buhbuhbam	#884
Gammagooey	Gamma	#853
Iecerint	Iecerint	#713
JDodge	hallucinogen	#324
kiwieagle	kiwithefruit	#504
Llamarble	llamarble	#198
Moratorium	moratorium	#246
Morthas	Morthas	#861	EU
Papa Zito	PapaZito	#836
pickemgenius	pickemgenius	#577
Quagmire	ChipperPear	#134
scotmany12	ejcraw	#253
SaintKerrigan	StKerrigan	#662
Nuwen	Nuwen	#294
Shanba	Shanba	#743	EU
TheButtonMen	TheButtonMen	#659
TheGunslinger	Marksman	#977
VisMaior	legallyBlind	#469	EU
xRECKONERx	reckonerX	#447
Zyrconium	Zyrconium	#398	EU

KoC
Cyberbob
Gandalf
DeathNote
bv (?)
moospiker
Tanstalas
UltimaAvalon

[Claus]

I wonder if there is some sort of crawler or website that tracks league position of people, that we could use to have an automated list of the classification of each scummer in the ladder?

[AGar]

If SC2Ranks wasn't shitting itself, we can make a custom "division."

E: It works, making the division now. Link soon.

[Iecerint]

Ha. Like a more formal Worst of the Worst.